Jay was on the fan today @ 3pm. Here's a synopsis from a poster at RealGm:

Quote:

Jack asks about Reggie Evans and Antoine Wright.

- We're not sure about either one. Both have injuries we're trying to evaluate. Antoine is a lot closer than Reggie. Reggie has a hard time putting any weight on his foot. Says they had 6 games in a short amount of time, looking forward to evaluating those six games and putting together how they're going to get better.
- Working on new defensive schemes, keep everything on the outside, but then Shane Battier went 8-for-10. Said they have to keep things on the outside but be better at closing out. Said guys lost faith, gave up the middle, and then everything fell apart. Our defence has been "fairly solid up until last night" and "we played a team that shot the ball well." Then says "that's no excuse, we need to defend a lot better."

-System is going to take a while to instill. "hopefully we get a lot better." Says the good teams have been successful defensively and have had years to get good. Says we're going to get there, he has guys who are quick learners and buying in, but unfortunately right now old habits are kicking in and they start missing assignments, which good teams will expose.

Jack asks what they're going to do when offence isn't working, if they can win ugly.

- Jay says it's a challenge. Offence will come and go, defence and rebounding are consistent, which is why he's emphasizing it. If you're going to be competitive, you have to be defensively sound every night. Has to be something everybody buys into. Those first two weeks of pre-season, all of their focus has been on defence, "still not quite there." Says a lot of mistakes last night were just fatigue mistakes. Guys are tired, back to back was tough. 6 games in 10 days is an "awful lot." Hedo and Chris hurt the team in the 3rd quarter because they're not physically capable of playing high intensity, especially at defensive end.

Oh Jesus, Triano sounds like a High School coach idiot boy. Why is he allowed to speak to the medial, why do we not have some crack Raptors Forum Coaching Specialists over at the ACC so they can help him through these difficult questions.

I mean really.... patience??? Old habits?????? Defensive collapses that lead to exploitation from Professional opponents??????

Last year even though he was here for three quarters of the regular season, he needed a training camp to implement his system. Now near the end of training camp with the team looking progressively worse, good defensive teams have played together for years. What's next? Good defensive teams have had franchises in the league for at least 20 years?

Last year even though he was here for three quarters of the regular season, he needed a training camp to implement his system. Now near the end of training camp with the team looking progressively worse, good defensive teams have played together for years. What's next? Good defensive teams have had franchises in the league for at least 20 years?

What specific guys? Bosh, Bargnani and Calderon? 'Cause everyone one else can't have "Raptors bad habits". Have they carried their bad habits from their previous teams?

Look, I will agree that it's too early to panic, but Battier's threes were quite clearly the result of the implemented strategy of "packing the middle". There is no way the team can "pack the paint" and get to the long-bombers quick enough to bother an NBA three-point shot - the floor is not that small. So, and especially against a team like Houston with very few players capable of beating even an average defender one-on-one, that strategy was simply plain wrong.

It sure didn't help that in the second half they've forgotten about protecting the paint as well, but 8-10 shooting from three does that to people, you know...

i thought our defense was great the first half. we got more boards and had better interior defense. which i like a lot better than perimeter defense..
he just subbed in the scrubs. no Bosh turk barg in 4th quarter = losing game.

I was as upset as anybody for the way we played in the second half against boston and houston, and also against the wizards at times. Bosh in particular was a major dissapointment, the reason he's added 25 pounds is not to go head first against 3 players in the paint, but to rebound and defend better, which I didn't see any trace of. Turkoglu and Calderon are not playing anything close like they should. Only Bargnani is playing according to expectations (although some here seem to have expected him to be an all-nba defense team member or something). BUT, let's be fair to CB4 and Hedu, and give them a little more time to get up to speed. I wish that wasn't the case, but I'm willing to give the benefit here.

If you exclude the Houston game, we'd be #10 in the league in FHA. That's good. The Houston game might be an outlier, according to triano, they had a very intensive practice on tue, followed by the game against Boston. Which makes the hou game almostike a 3rd game in 3 nights.

In any case, triano's statement was that until the Houston game, our defence was pretty solid, and the numbers seem to confirm that statement. What's interesting is that even after Houston, our 3pt defense is still average.

I think it's too early to panic, Bosh and hedu are clearly not 100%, let's wait until we are at full strength until evaluating.

Jay really struggled in his interview after the game with Houston. I was not impressed .. he seemed confused and was trying to find some optimism.
Defense sucked and they looked like an unorganized high school team ... it's up to him and his coaching staff not to let embarrassing situations occur.
If Amir did what POPs did, we would be singing the praise of the next messiah. POPs is no star and we let him look like one ... scary stuff!!
This may be a long season unless our starters make it personal and don't let shit like this happen ... I realize it's the pre-season, but it felt too much like last year.
2 weeks into training camp should be better.
Now I'll put my Raptor hat on and hope things change .. fingers crossed.